"Apparently she is exactly the same when she is watching the television. She loves watching Downton Abbey and pointing out things they have got wrong, partly because she is familiar with Highclere Castle, where it is filmed. She used to stay there as a guest of the Carnarvon family.
"She is the same when she is watching anything on television. In one programme she was watching, the Queen noticed that a British officer was wearing medals that were from the wrong era. It was set in the First World War but the medals he was wearing did not come in until the Second World War."
The Queen is not the only royal Downton watcher - the Duchess of Cambridge is known to be a "huge" fan, and makes the Duke of Cambridge watch it with her, and the Duchess of Cornwall never misses an episode, though the Prince of Wales is less keen.
Downton Abbey employs the royal commentator Alastair Bruce as its historical adviser, but his advice is not always heeded and a string of historical anomalies have cropped up.
In an episode set in 1912, a 1921 Model T Ford was being used. In another, there was a piano rendition of a song written six years after the episode was set. Such late 20th century devices as television aerials, double yellow lines and a PVC conservatory have also made appearances, and in a publicity photograph for the fifth series a plastic water bottle had been left on the fireplace.
Mr Hoey said the Queen also loves watching Dad's Army, perhaps because she remembers the Home Guard platoon based at Windsor Castle during the war. She is also a fan of Last of the Summer Wine and, surprisingly, the X Factor.
During her visit to Ireland in 2011 she told Mary Byrne, a former contestant on the ITV1 talent show, that her staff record X Factor for her and she watches it the next day.
